We’re excited because out today marks the release of Gumption, the absolutely stunning latest effort from Kansas based songwriter Taryn Miller, aka Your Friend .
This collection of eight brooding, elegantly crafted, haunting tracks follows on from the release of her debut self-recorded EP, Jekyll/Hyde, in early 2014.
Miller began writing the songs that would become Gumption at her studio space and apartment in Lawrence, Kansas after returning from touring in mid-2014. From there, she started recording with producer Nicolas Vernhes (The War on Drugs, Deerhunter) at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, which helped Your Friend fulfill a penchant for drones, loops and found sounds. “I paid attention to textures,” Miller says explained.
“I was trying to remove myself from an approach that I had followed before, but still wanted to bring in that melodic element that is most inherent to me, and marry it with a more sonically meditative landscape.” The result is an incredibly moving piece of work that explores the dualities and nuances of human interaction, and questions how much we, as individuals, are responsible for in the ways we are perceived.
To celebrate the release of the record (out today via Domino) Miller has penned for us an incredibly in-depth track by track run down of the record, check it out below along with the record stream and if you like what you’re hearing be sure to pop by the Your Friend Facebook page for more info.
Heathering
This was the first song that I started working out after the EP. I had played a few times at solo shows and on tour. I had wanted it to start a little more like a lull and then shift into something else by the end, and I think we preserved that vision of it really well.
I think my favorite thing about the track is that beginning “blip” of sound that you hear at the beginning of it. I was just playing around in the room while Nicolas was getting everything ready to track and he had caught a bit of it and left it there as a placeholder.
We went back and forth about keeping it there but both realized that we secretly liked it. I think it’s a bit poetic in that so many moments in the studio like that, led to what the record ended up surfacing as.
Come Back From It
This song wasn’t really a complete song when I brought the demo in. I had planned on scrapping it but there was this drum loop that I had made for the demo that Nicolas really loved.
It’s that churning sound that you hear from the beginning and it goes the entire song, but goes between hiding and revealing itself. I see it as the backbone to some degree. I had a raw idea of what the verses were but we agreed that there just wasn’t really a chorus, or a place that it opened up to.
I’ll probably tell this story too many times, but we were sitting alone in the control room and he played Lou Reed’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, and we sat quietly through the entire song. Then he just said, “Go write a chorus, you have thirty minutes.” This one was really fun to make. I had built several loops for each chord in the entire song and we collaged them, so it has that cinematic, swirling like sound.
I loved listening to those tracks just soloed. I see it as my “baby’s first,” pop song. It was such a brooding demo and ended up taking on entirely different form.
To Live With
This was a track that I had recorded when I was at home. I have this reel to reel that I’ve been trying to experiment a little more with. There was a box of old tapes that came with it so I put them on then recorded onto them while using the material that was on them. I cut them all up and blended them in strange ways.
There are some field recordings in there as well. Nicolas has (I hope he doesn’t mind me giving this information out) some amazing solo recordings that he’s done that exist in that aesthetic that I’m really drawn to. We had talked about doing a track like that together. I think he was going to add some things but ended up finding a box of old tapes from the 90s of him “losing his mind,” on a guitar. He tried one of them on it and it was so strange that we used it.
Desired Things
This song was written in my apartment, late, one night. Well, at least the skeletal version of it. It was a lot slower and looser to begin with. I finished the overall structure and harmony of it in my studio here in Lawrence.
We ended up using pieces of it on the final version so there are really subtle things happening in there. I remember this track being both discouraging, and triumphant in ways. It was the first song that I felt the “breakthrough” moment happen during tracking. Initially, the demo was in such a lingering time signature that it made it too difficult to keep for the rest of the band to play on. We ended up having to redo do the entire foundation of the song.
There was a moment that we had returned from lunch and I was going to do a Juno and scratch vocal take to establish the overall form. I’m not sure what really came over me but it felt truly like a performance. My back was turned away from the control room and we had my vocals going through a Supro that was mic’ed instead of DI’d so the result was really raw.
I came back in after a single take and everyone was just quiet until Dixey (Nathan Dixey), broke it with, “Whoa.” Haha, we ended up keeping that take and it became the main vocal. At the end of one of the longer days Nicolas took two tremolo pedals and had Chris stay on one of them. They both ebbed and flowed with each other which resulted in that warble that I really love.
Nothing Moved
This was one of the tracks I had started working out before we left on our first tour so we were able to sink into it a bit by playing it out. It became more of a heaving kind of track in the studio, which I kind of love about it.
Steve Marion (Delicate Steve) was moseying around Brooklyn when Gabe Wax ran into him and asked if he would want to come by. He’s insane on a guitar. We tracked a few different things with him and mixed them with guitar that I had played. In a way, it’s like two guitars soloing at the same time. I played Annie Clark’s old Bobkat that was in the studio on this one. I love the grit that it has.
Gumption
This song was one that came together by merging two songs that I had been working with. I really enjoyed the process with this one.
It was really challenging and ultimately rewarding. Lyrically, I had those written and more or less adapted to the way the structure changed. Melodically I was able to preserve most of what I had. The drum tracks were built off of isolated sounds from an old drum machine and Nicolas programmed them so well.
I really love the shuffle of it, and then having the second set of drums overlap at the end. They dance together and through one another in a nice way. We spent a lot of time on the texture of it and I’m really happy with how it turned out. With it being the title track, it’s the umbrella that the rest take shelter under. So much went into making this record. This track, to me is the the first sign of a splinter surfacing enough to start the process of removal.
I Turned In
I had a solo show scheduled at one point and tend to feel comfortable with trying out newer material in those settings. This song transformed a lot over the course of trying it out live, demoing it, then how it changed in the studio.
As a placeholder, I had been using a rhythm sample I had made for the solo shows but once we were in a studio setting it just didn’t seem to work for what I had envisioned the mood of the track to be. This was the song that came together last. I ended up scrapping what we had tracked and sat down at a Wurlitzer that was in the live room, reworking it. Chris came in and started building a vocal loop.
I had another rhythm sample that was working under that and it just started coming together. Nicolas ended up taking an older drum machine and borrowing sounds from that. We mixed the two rhythms together.
This was a track that I had fantasized Dave (Harrington) to play on and what he ended up sending is my favorite part about it altogether. I can listen to his track on its own. It’s distressed and beautiful, all at once. The track overall was inspired by returning to the darker corners of self realization, in order to reach a necessary awareness that will lead to deconstructing pattern that you want to remove yourself from.
Who Will I Be in the Morning
The beginning of it is a piece of a 4-track recording I had been building. I was in the studio one night letting that kind of marinate and for some reason, that melody started to surface and I just kept dancing around the piano, over the progression until I grew tired of it.
It’s the most cathartic for me to do live. I felt liberated that night and thought, that’s how I’m ending the record. When I brought it into the studio we ended one of our days with going to our “stations,” and honing in on one specific instrument/texture. At the end of the mixing stage, it felt like the end of a paragraph. It’s an accurate portrayal of where I was at mentally at the time.
It stemmed from the idea of those first forgiving moments that you’re allowed when you wake up, where you haven’t fully gathered your thoughts yet. I had a lot of evenings around that time that I wasn’t looking forward to how I might be feeling the following day. There’s something about being forced to acknowledge what’s happening that’s temporarily relieved, from the nature of early moments of consciousness.
Gumption is out today via Domino.
